


Until

by sariagray



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Emotional Damage, M/M, Pills, Post-Reichenbach, Sex, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-02
Updated: 2012-05-02
Packaged: 2017-11-04 17:20:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sariagray/pseuds/sariagray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock comes back a little broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by analineblue.

Sherlock, in his dressing gown that gapes around his chest and sways at his calves, stares into the mirror. Gazes beyond it, past his own reflection to the crack in the tile behind him. It is the same length it has always been, but if he stares long enough, the crack looks like it’s growing.

He needs to shave, in terms of personal preference, but the truth is he could let it go another day, maybe two, and no one would notice.

Breakfast is waiting for him on the kitchen counter. Orange juice, coffee, toast. It has been sitting there for three hours; now everything is the same temperature and the flat is purged of the smells of cooking.

He opens the medicine cabinet, changing the angle of reflection in the mirror, to retrieve the pill bottle. He depresses and turns the cap, shakes one out, and takes it quickly.

\--

John’s hand is warm on Sherlock’s shoulder, fingers curled against his collarbone. It feels oddly sensitive, as though skin and flesh have dissolved away and the calcium absorbed the remaining nerves.

John says, “You can have two if you eat the crackers I left out.”

In the sitting room there is a small plate with five round thin crackers on it. It seems like too much – an unequal trade of five for two, but he nods once and John smiles.

“I’ll be happier if you have them with some cheese.”

Sherlock scowls. The idea of that much rich food is unsettling, and he’s too poor to afford to buy John’s happiness. 

“Fine, just the crackers then.”

John removes his hand from Sherlock’s shoulder and dumps two pills into his own palm, closing his fingers around them. He turns the tap and fills a glass with water.

The bathroom is tight and they are close, almost pressed up against each other.

“Drink it all,” John says.

Sherlock hesitates, then nods again.

\--

_Sherlock had wanted to wait until the blonde grew out, until his hair got long enough to hold its natural curl, until the slash on his cheek faded to a paler white, until his skin warmed away the cold yellow-grey tinge, until his flesh filled out less skeletal._

_Until he knew how to form words again. Until the pain in his right leg subsided and the strange, alien limp went away._

_Of course, it didn’t work out that way._

\--

John keeps the bottle in his pocket when they go out, and there’s an alarm on his mobile that goes off every four hours.

(He doesn’t need the alarm – Sherlock starts furrowing his brow around the three hour mark, and hiding winces twenty-some minutes prior.)

Then John will press a pill to Sherlock’s lips, let him take it between his teeth (clenching, like he’s determined to bite it in two) and swallow it dry.

\--

When Sherlock takes two, he has vivid dreams like memories – John’s skin (warm) and hands (firm) and mouth (soft) and eyes (dark-bright) and they’re in unfamiliar old places.

He can’t tell if it’s the pills or the food he’s forced to eat or the slow-dissipating feeling of John’s fingers on his collarbone.

\--

At night, John lays each remaining pill on the indented lip of the bathroom sink. They stand, regimented, in a perfect line.

He counts them.

‘There was a time this would have seemed like a good idea,’ he says to himself when he imagines swallowing them all in one go.

\--

The light in the bathroom flickers twice before dimming yellow-orange. It hums softly, like bees.

“We’ll have to get that seen to,” John mutters.

He’s palpating the injuries on Sherlock’s leg, looking for increased damage or swelling or decreased blood flow or alien spaceships, for all Sherlock knows or cares.

“Looks good,” he says, and staggers up from his knees. “Much better. Will you eat some toast?”

Sherlock nods.

“With jam?”

Sherlock frowns.

“Right. Can you manage just one tonight?”

He will be expected to eat two thick slices for it, and John will probably try to sneak butter on them (as if the brightness of salt and heaviness of cream weren’t so insultingly obvious). Sherlock opens his mouth, breathes.

“Two?” – harsh and quiet.

“Oh. Yes, well. Um. Okay. Fine, that’s fine. Two, then.”

That wasn’t what he wanted his first word to be at all.

\--

That night, there are seventeen pills. There are supposed to be eighteen.

John doesn’t say anything.

\--

That night, Sherlock dreams that they’re in an ocean, he and John, and the water is sweet and cool and he wants to drink it all. He’s so thirsty, burning up with too much heat and light, bone dry, delirious with it until everything around him evaporates. Then John places his lips on Sherlock’s forehead and everything stops. There is blissful metallic blackness and nothing else.

When he wakes up, he’s alone and oddly surprised by it.

\--

John stands in the bathroom in the morning, staring at the lines around his eyes. He rotates the pill bottle around in his right hand, like a rain stick. 

There are seventeen pills and no refills left.

“One.”

John looks up. Sherlock is watching him from the doorway.

\--

_When he first came back, he was supposed to speak ‘John’ and ‘sorry’ and maybe even ‘more,’ ‘please,’ or ‘stay.’_

_Once, he thought, ‘love.’_

_All that ends up coming out is a cough, and then the words dry up completely._

\--

‘John’ takes a long time for Sherlock to remember how to say, so foreign has it become on his tongue. It comes long after ‘one’ and ‘two’ and ‘no’ and ‘fine’ and ‘idiot.’ It comes in between the silences.

Sherlock has always been selfish.

Still, it feels like he breathes – _finally_ – the first time he says it, and a little bit of dust is expelled from his lungs.

\--

John counts Sherlock’s words like he counts his pills. He lines them up, tries to make sense of them – to see the bigger picture that is painted by the smallest things. They never like to draw pleasant scenes.

\--

“You’re healing well,” John says.

Sherlock has said ‘John’ and ‘yes’ and ‘tea’ and ‘thank you’ all in the past week. They glow prettily next to the uglier words. There are seven pills left. There should only be two.

“Yes,” Sherlock says and John hides his grin.

“Think you can manage curry tonight?”

“John.”

It’s all a bit like hitting the jackpot, and John’s smile widens – completely beyond his control.

“John,” Sherlock says again, and grabs John’s wrist. 

The hold is loose, warm but insistent. His thumb rubs once over the inside of John’s wrist and his eyes are wider and softer than John has ever seen them.

\--

That night, Sherlock finally tries out ‘more’ and ‘please’ and ‘stay,’ and he makes a litany of John’s name, practices the shape of it on his tongue, against the roof of his mouth and the backs of his teeth so that he never has to think how to say it again.

‘Love,’ though – that one he’s saving until the rest of the dust is out of his lungs, until he is clean again.


End file.
